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Making the World of Warcraft more trivial, one post at a time…

It's all work in Pandaria

Change. And not a moment too soon…

  • Goodbye, Typepad! You were great once upon a time, but you just didn’t move with the times.
  • Hello, WordPress! Yes, Leafshine.net joins the rest of the WoW blogging community on that platform, thanks to a migration via TP2WP
  • Adios, Feedburner – because if Google no longer cares about you, I probably shouldn’t either.
  • Bonjour, FeedPress – because you’re looking pretty sweet.
  • Hey, while I was away, mobile devices became A Thing. So let’s have a sweet, minimal responsive theme from Theme Foundry.
  • And while we’re at it, let’s use CloudFlare to speed it all up.

This is the new Leafshine.net. What do you think?

One thing that has changed dramatically in gaming while I've been distracted has been the rise in livestreaming of games, and Twitch in particular.

And with it came a new opportunity for trolling – but with horrible consequences:

DeQuincy, LA — What many teenagers these days are considering a harmless prank, has landed one online gamer in more trouble than he could have ever imagined. In a Louisiana courtroom today, 15-year-old Paul Horner broke down in tears after a judge found the young man guilty on two counts of domestic terrorism and was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in federal prison.

Seems harsh, until you read on and find out what happened:

After obtaining the rival gamers information, prosecutors say Horner called police and reported a murder/hostage situation at the home. SWAT team then raided the house, shooting and critically injuring the “Livestreamer’s” father in the process. 

UPDATE: Hoax, thank goodness.

The problem with dropping out of WoW life for about 18 months is that certain things have just gone away. Like my guild, for example – but more on that later.

Another thing that went away completely was Google Reader – killed off last year by the Big G. Luckily, I had the foresight to take a few minutes to dump out my RSS subscriptions via Google Takeout, and I had them safely stored away in my Dropbox.

So, one quick sign-up with Feedly later, and my feeds are coming in…

Upload that XML

Importing the OPML files

 

Now my old WoW RSS feeds are up and running again, and looking rather magazine-like:

WoW Blogs in Feedly

WoW Blogs in Feedly

Except…

It’s as if 1,000 blogs cried out and were silenced

Well, a lot of them have died. I’ve always known that the attrition rate amongst WoW bloggers is high, but it has been utterly brutal in the 18 months since I was last reading them regulalrly. It looks like the vast majority of the blogs in my reader are defunct, or on very long term hiatus.

And there’s worse than that. Some of them have gone away and been replaced by… something else. The defunct Mama Druid now looks like this:

Mama Druid no more

Mama Druid no more

And the wonderfully named Laser Chicken is now, well, foreign to me…

Laser Chicken goes foreign

Laser Chicken goes foreign

Time to rebuild. Any recommendations?

Getting wood, old style

Getting wood, old style

What the hell happened to Leafshine?

Dammit, this blog is over five years old – and it missed its half decade anniversary. Silence has reigned for months, with only occasional bursts of activity. What is happening here?

Well, the major reason for silence over the last six months can be summed up thus:

Hazel PoP

I’m on your blog, Daddy

Yes, Dr. Leafy and I had our first child back in the summer and – while I had initial hopes that life might return to something like normal (hence the “countdown posts” that went nowhere…) – it changes everything. Free time has been at a major premium, and WoW has all but vanished off my agenda.

No More Work?

Our baby daughter isn’t entirely to blame. Just over a year ago, I was made redundant from a job I loved, managing a network of 100+ business blogs, and training journalists in online skills. I finally made the decision to try and build a freelance and conultancy career. That’s been going well – but there have been extended periods where I haven’t been able to give myself permission to do anything apart from try and build that career. Rethinking your working lifestyle is hard enough on its own, but when you combine it with having a child and buying a new house, well, 2012 was most certainly an “interesting” time for me.

So, here we are, in 2013, with a beautiful baby girl, a wonderful new house by the sea, and a great new way of working. Where does that leave WoW?

As is stands, Leafy is level… 86. Yes, nearly two patches into the expansion, I’ve managed a whole measly level. Yet, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve done nearly half a level on top of that. Things are shifting; my daughter is sleeping better, there are fewer demands on our time and I feel more free to spend time on fun activities.

My spacebar excuse

Heck, I’ve even played with my daughter on my knee a few times. She’s figured out the space bar and what it does, so all of a sudden Leafshine has turned into one of those Night Elves. Ah, well.

So, no promises of a return to blogging here. No grandiose plans. Just a quick checkin to explain, and let your know that things are shifting a little…

How have you all been?

Leafy at 86